Table of Content
1. Dimensions of Practical Necessity: An Introduction
Part I. Examples: The Necessity of Love and the Unforgivable
2. Loving Eyes of My Own: Love, Particularity, and Necessity (Marya Schechtman)
3. “I cannot forgive you.” The Unforgivable as an Example of a Practical Necessity (Oliver Hallich)
Part II. Normative Claims: Personal Practical Necessity and Practical Identities
4. Christine Korsgaard and the Normativity of Practical Identities (Christoph Bambauer)
5. What if I Cannot Do What I Have to Do? Notions of Personal Practical Necessity and the Principle “Ought Implies Can” (Michael Kühler)
Part III. Normative Challenges: Vice and Akrasia
6. Vice, Practical Necessity, and Agential Self-Destruction (Jonathan Jacobs)
7. Three Ways to Understand Practical Necessity and akrasia: Aristotle, Davidson, and Frankfurt (Kathi Beier)
8. Here I stand, I could do other: Can a Person of Integrity Be Weak-Willed? (Arnd Pollmann)
Part IV. Volitional and Psychological Challenges: Ambiguity, Psychopathy, and Shame
9. Where? Me? Indeterminacy and Ambiguity in Human Motivation (Jan Bransen)
10. Shame and Necessity Redux (Heidi Maibom)
Part V. Concluding Evaluations
11. Here I Stand: About the Weight of Practical Necessity (Katharina Bauer)
12. Morality and Happiness: Two Precarious Situations? (Corinna Mieth)
About the author
Somogy Varga (Ph D, Goethe Universität, Frankfurt am Main) is associate professor of philosophy at the University of Memphis. His primary areas of research are philosophy of psychiatry/mind, moral psychology and social philosophy. His publications includeAuthenticity as an Ethical Ideal (Routledge 2011) and
Naturalism, Interpretation, and Mental Disorder (Oxford University Press 2015).
Katharina Bauer, Dr. phil., is a Feodor-Lynen Fellow of the Humboldt Foundation at Rijskuniversiteit Groningen. In 2016 she has completed her habilitation thesis about theories of practical necessity as a research scholar of the “Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)”. She is the author of E
inander zu erkennen geben. Das Selbst zwischen Erkenntnis und Gabe (Alber 2012).
Corinna Mieth is Professor for Political Philosophy and Philosophy of Law at the Ruhr-University of Bochum (Germany). Her main areas of specialization are positive duties, human rights and human dignity, global justice, world poverty, and moral dilemmas. She is the author of
Positive Pflichten (Positive Duties). Über das Verhältnis von Hilfe und Gerechtigkeit in Bezug auf das Weltarmutsproblem (de Gruyter 2012).